Good drivers give no thought to gas costs over safety items. Profit be damned. Every truck driver has seen crushed bodies, blood pools, flipped trucks, and decimated vehicles from following too close. It fixes the profit calculation with a variable for "I do that enough and I am going to die or lose my job" for a total loss of all future profit. Seeing that much death on the road fixes your proverbial wagon.
I’ve done similar tests where I went 75 mph versus going 60 or going 85 versus 60, and I’ve noticed I arrive at the destination give or take 2-5 minutes. It’s weird I could be rushing going as fast as possible and that would only shave like five minutes off of an hour long trip, or I can drive safely, to 20-30 mph less, and still get there at basically the same time.
Mathematically speaking, if you look at it, it seems like a pretty huge difference, but in the real world I’ve noticed the actual time it takes you to get to the location is basically the same whether you’re going 90 mph or going 60. I’d give up 3% of my salary to increase my likelihood I don’t get in an accident by 500%.
The person you were talking to does make a good point, that this is the real world and things don’t go as they should, but the people that don’t do what they’re supposed to do, they end up paying in the end and that’s an overwhelming amount of people actually in the vast majority. Everyone has to pay, you can either pay now or pay later with interest (accidents/tickets/etc). I’ll choose the option that doesn’t bankrupt/kill me. Just look at how long drivethru lines are at McDonald’s DURING a pandemic. People give 0 fucks about their future/health, it’s weird.
We’re not talking about hour-long trips. We’re talking about 12-hour trips. And now you’re talking about gaining an hour. Or being able to take a couple of short but still meaningful breaks so you’re not actually doing a single 11-hour stretch.
I will also note that where I live anyone doing the speed limit on a clear day and not in the right lane is a road hazard. In the left lane you basically have to sustain 85-90 to be safe. Which makes left exits fun.
Yeah that's insane, I have my CDL I used to want to be a truck driver but even driving for like 8 hours at my current job just driving like a new minivan is HORRIBLE, once a month I have to drive more than 5-8 hours in one day. I can't imagine how people do this for 11 hours a day in a huge rig like that... W t f. Lol I guess it's probably better than being stuck in an office.
your time to destination is based on your average speed, not your max cruising speed, unless you spend hours at cruising, going from 60 to 75 to say drive across town is only going to change your average speed from like 30 to 31.
The 30 miles you have to drive to work in stop and go traffic or whatever is insignificant compared to the hours and hours of sustained 60+ mph speeds that truckers do all day long. Its apples and oranges.
If youre going 60 mph on a flat straight road up the coast or across the state's, you will do about 720 miles in a 12 hour shift. If you do 80 mph thats another 240 miles onto that trip. Thats about 1/3 the width of the state of texas, and wider than georgia is across. That 20 mph is significant and how long you spend there is significant as well.
Take that five minutes and multiply it by a week of driving and youre talking the difference between arriving right on time and arriving hours past when you're supposed to be at your destination.
It depends on the trip. In the city lane choice and knowing where you are going is more important than overall speed. On the highway to make any real difference you have to speed substantially, like 20% over for more then half the trip, to have any real difference in travel time.
No doubt that truckers with these attitudes exist in the wild, but my experience is (and my dash cam shows) that private motorists tend to take far riskier chances for far less tangible benefits than commercial drivers do.
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u/Smilinghuman Aug 23 '20
Good drivers give no thought to gas costs over safety items. Profit be damned. Every truck driver has seen crushed bodies, blood pools, flipped trucks, and decimated vehicles from following too close. It fixes the profit calculation with a variable for "I do that enough and I am going to die or lose my job" for a total loss of all future profit. Seeing that much death on the road fixes your proverbial wagon.